I don't have to dig out corpses.
@Kunal Biswas has been fighting for Insas now for 3-4 years. Read up all those posts and counter arguments. Besides, if Insas is that good, why our govt has ditched it now in favor of a foreign assault rifle?
The thing is, we all are looking at things in wrong way. Its not the rifle which is having problem with think tanks. Its the round basically. To ramp up your memory, INSAS was conceived in late 80s and early 90 to replace our 7.62 SLR with lighter 5.56 version. If you look at the initial design of INSAS it was heavily influenced by L1A1. You could simply say that it was miniatured version of L1A1. It was mass produced and introduced during the Kargil era and as any other platform, it did faced a lot of problem in its initiation.
The well known media and foreign arms lobby did grabbed this very situation from day one and began bitching it for foreign import. But have a look at the famous M16 used by US and other armed forces. When M16A1 was introduced in Vietnam era, the soldiers just loathed it saying it to be a plastic toy. Then it took almost 20 years for new improved M16A2 to get introduced.
If the lobbies and US armed forced would have done the same what is being done with INSAS, A2 would have never came out of production line. Now as for INSAS, look at the improved version of 1B2, its not as unreliable as 1B1 of Kargil era and which was famously snubbed by Nepalese Armed forces for getting too hot in auto firing mode.
The problem with our armed forces is of some people with vested interest in some of the most important executive positions and their nexus with foreign lobbies and journalists. Instead of speaking of the rounds, they do start presenting the platform in poor light. Its the round which stops and kill, not the rifle. And it was IA who insisted on 5.56 instead of 7.62. 5.56 was not forced down their throat.
As for quality of INSAS is concerned, have it been analyzed with contemporary platforms? If the foreign
maals are so top of the line, why the first RFI got scrapped in the first place, that too in Congress era? If you don't remember clearly, none of the participants could cleared all the evaluation tests and Excalibur came on top of others.
You see, the real problem lies with our think tanks and their approach to problems. It is always a knee jerk reaction form our side. Latest example is this RFI immediately after URI attack. Its as if it happened because of INSAS. Didn't we have 7.62 firing AK's there? Why it could not make a difference? You simply can't blame a rifle for a fiasco.
By stating all these, I am not showing any blind interest in indigenous product of showing blind nationalism. I do only want to point out our sick mentality and vested interest which surface each and every time.
